8 forgotten Marvel heroes who deserve their own spin-off film and TV shows
From the little-known pages of Marvel comic history come these heroes crying out for a big budget blow out
Two relatively minor Marvel comic book characters are being give the spotlight in May, which has prompted us to reflect on some of the other niche Marvel heroes that deserve their own spin-offs.
The Punisher: One Last Kill hits Disney+ on May 12th, and is being listed as a Marvel Television Special Presentation that bridges the gap between the events of the recently concluded Daredevil: Born Again season and his expected appearance in Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
While some would balk at the description of Frank Castle’s deadly antihero as a ‘niche character’, we’d argue that nicheness (might have just invented a word there) is baked into the character.
Starting out life as a brutal Spider-Man antagonist, his whole raison d’etre was to stand apart from the more traditional do-gooding heroes with a particularly ‘70s brand of violence and cynicism.
Still, The Punisher seems positively mainstream compared to Spider-Man Noir, who gets his own stand-alone TV series on MGM+ (in the US) and Amazon Prime (in the UK) later this month.
Part of the already-pretty-weird Marvel Noir universe, he’s an alternate version of Spider-Man with a hard-boiled detective vibe. In this particular iteration, he’s being played by the incomparable Nicolas Cage. It’s out there, alright.
So which other oddball or just plain unknown Marvel characters should be next for the big (or small) screen treatment? Here are a few candidates.
1. Beta Ray Bill
Remember when people actually liked Thor? Taika Waititi did well to give the Norse dolt a fresh lick of paint (not to mention a welcome humour injection) with Thor: Ragnorok, before taking the silliness way too far with the execrable Thor: Love and Thunder. Beta Ray Bill could help restore some of that quirky cosmic magic as an equine alien who proves himself worthy of wielding Mjolnir, Thor’s mighty hammer. Fun fact – the levelled-up Storm Breaker hammer that was shown being forged during the Avengers: Infinity War movie was originally made for Beta Ray Bill in the comics.
2. New Warriors
Originally created in 1989, the New Warriors can ultimately be thought of as a kind of junior version of The Avengers, with younger superheroes filling out the usual superteam roles. The lower age of these heroes naturally dictates a zestier, more youthful brand of costumed heroism than we’ve grown accustomed to through successive cinematic versions of Marvel’s middle-aged A-team. Interestingly, Marvel actually made a pilot of a New Warriors TV series back in 2017 featuring Squirrel Girl (see elsewhere on this list), but it never aired. Time for another go, perhaps?
3. Captain Britain
There have been rumours of Captain Britain appearing in the MCU for years now, with none other than Henry Cavill heavily linked with the role. The hero himself is a hugely camp mish-mash of Arthurian legend and posh English tropes – the kind of nominally British character only an American could come up with – but we’d love to see the character reimagined by a skilled set of UK writers. Given Marvel’s often very US-centric cinematic universe, it’d be nice to add a splash of self-deprecating UK flavour to proceedings.
4. Blue Marvel
For all Chadwick Boseman’s (RIP) stellar work as Black Panther, there remains a vacancy for a Marvel hero who reflects the black American experience – especially when you consider how badly underserved Anthony Mackie’s The Falcon/Captain America has been through successive televisual and cinematic duds. Blue Marvel has the potential to tell a compelling story – a godlike Thor/Sentry-tier hero who is forced to retire in the 1960s due to the civil unrest that comes about when the public discover he is black. Assuming Marvel’s writers can keep the generic sassy quip quotient to the minimum, it could be great.
5. Nova
According to industry rumour, there is already a Nova project in the works, but until we receive official confirmation we’re treating the IP as fair game. The Nova Corps is essentially Marvel’s equivalent of DC’s Green Lantern Corps, with a similar ‘superpowered space cops’ angle. We’ve actually seen them appearing in the MCU before in the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie, before they were wiped out (off screen) by Thanos in the lead up to Avengers: Infinity War. That sounds like the perfect set-up for the most prominent member, Earth’s Richard Rider, to make his fish-out-of-water entrance.
6. Howard the Duck
He might have starred in his own George Lucas-produced film in the mid-‘80s, and has already appeared in the MCU via three Guardians of the Galaxy cameos and a What If... episode (voiced by Seth Green), but Howard the Duck remains the cultiest of cult Marvel heroes. This sarcastic anthropomorphic duck – he’s actually an extra-dimensional alien, but let’s call a waterfowl a waterfowl – could provide just the left-field twist that the Marvel Cinematic Universe so sorely needs, as well as a vehicle for even more detective noir goodness.
7. Miracleman
If anyone wanted Marvel to take a crack at the whole adult-oriented superheroes thing in the wake of the success of The Boys and Invincible, then Miracleman would be an intriguing candidate. This obscure godlike hero (he’s quite literally Marvel’s Shazam, as the legal records will attest) started out in the ‘50s, before receiving an acclaimed revisionist treatment by Alan Moore in the ‘80s. The latter run recontextualised Miracleman’s wholesome origins in a much more sinister light, and dealt with the whole ‘what if Superman was real?’ concept decades before it became the cool thing to do.
8. Squirrel Girl
Doreen Green, aka Squirrel Girl, is a human mutate (though we could well imagine her becoming part of the MCU’s upcoming mutant phase) with the agility and giant prehensile tail of a squirrel, as well as the ability to communicate with the furry critters. Squirrel Girl might just be the silliest hero in the wider Marvel universe, but she’d surely be a brilliant fit for the post-Deadpool MCU, given the right self-aware treatment – especially with her uncanny ability to defeat all comers through her smarts and her empathy rather than bishy-bashy hyper-violence.
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